Heavy traffic to success! – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Sometimes I feel like the route to success is always packed with so many others driving down that lane but everyone needs to intermittently wait while driving not because we are not eager to succeed but because there are traffic lights on the success routes as well. While thinking that you already know the way to success and that all you will have to do is to accelerate until the finish line, the traffic lights come on at the least expected time and the least expected signal, the red light signifying stop, comes up.

Having the red light on while traveling down the road to success may not really be a problem for so many people so long as it will not be up for too long but sometimes it looks as if the red light has come and it is determined to stay as long as possible. For this reason a heavy traffic begins to build on the drive way to success and some people begin to form lanes where there are no lanes and if there are no traffic wardens some people just disregard the signals and they drive off.

The red light on the pathway to success are the signals that come up when we have challenges and the orange light comes up to encourage us. The green light often comes up to spur us on to act on the things that we have believed in and to keep moving until we see a signal to stop again. Jumping the queue on the route to success is the exact thing that some people will do because they are too impatient for the red light to go. Sometimes the active time of the red light could just be the time to meet a new friend quickly. They could be friends who will make the journey smoother or easier. I have heard stories about heavy traffic situations where those involved are supposed to be going for parties with cooked food. When they noticed they could not go further or that the party would have been over by the time they get to their destination, they brought out their food ate and also gave to over people in traffic. What they did was to make the best of the situation. When the red light comes up – challenges that question your belief and principles – it doesn’t always pay to look for a quick way out.

You must always realize that on the drive way to success one of the things to do is to watch your dash board consistently instead of looking at the road alone. Your dash board is always telling you something that you need to do – buying additional fuel, filling your carburetor with water – and something you have done or are doing – how long you have been driving and at what speed you have been traveling. If you don’t watch out for all of this and you are just concerned about reaching your destination, you may never reach that destination.

What this implies is that many of us think about getting to our destination without thinking about some of the things that will get us there even if we can’t get there without those things. Sometimes it will look as if there is a heavy traffic on the path that we have chosen to drive on to be able to succeed. That heavy traffic situation is still a great part of the journey. The window of your car can become a window of opportunity while stuck in traffic if you are looking at the right things or if you are seeing right. Don’t jump the line on the drive way to success. There is a lesson in the heavy traffic – your delays and challenges!

Why employees have more degrees than business owners – Fola Daniel Adelesi

There will always be reasons for people to go back to school to get more degrees hoping to be able to get by in life after obtaining the degrees. Often times they get a little more disappointed than they were before they went for the degree because the realization of the fact that the degree often times is not the problem can be very devastating. They keep getting degrees to be able to work for some people who keep making money without bothering about their personal degrees. I will want to pose a challenge to you through a simple question but I will not want you to misunderstand the question. Do you think that most business owners all around the world have more degrees than their employees?

You may need to do a quick survey to answer that question but don’t go too far because I can help you. Dr. David Oyedepo is a man who has only one degree in architecture and obviously his title as a doctor is not the type that people obtained after doing a Ph.D programme. It was honorary doctorate degree because he never even went to a theological seminary. If he went there we could have said he got the Ph. D as a result of having done a lot of study in theological issues. Despite the fact that this great man has only one degree, he has several professors answering to him not probably because he is more intelligent than the professors but because he has a vision that those professors do not have. I know of several people who dropped their degree certifications to work with this man not because he has more degree but because he has a vision.

Most people have said again and again that Bill Gates didn’t finish from college but some of the things we need to focus on include how many college graduates and professors he is feeding today. During the acclaimed world economic downturn I read in the news that Microsoft, Bill’s company was going to lay off 5, 000 workers. If a company is going to lay off 5, 000 workers then the questions should be “how many people are under his direct employment?” What people started with was that he is a man who didn’t finish school but today he is paying several professors to search the cure for aids and this same man was said to have single handedly donated one billion dollars to the United Nations. If a man has donated one billion dollars to a body of nations where 192 countries are registered as at 2009, it simply means because of a vision, not a degree, he became rich enough to give money to 192 countries through a body.

Do not for any reason misinterpret what I am saying because this is not to say that the degree is not important. I have a university degree and as I write this article I have close to 20 certificates in my office from different trainings, conferences and seminars that I have attended. Go all out for the degree but don’t burn out because of the degree. I can emphatically ask you not to burn out because of the degree because no matter how many of the degrees you have you will still look for someone who has a vision and until the person with a vision has gone through your degree certification you will not be relevant and may not be able to make a living. That means more than half of the educated people are burning out to make themselves look presentable to some few people who have a vision. Do you have a degree only or it is couple with a vision?

Oral Roberts was an illiterate but he built a Christian university by vision, not degree!

Brain Capital & Idea-preneurship – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Amidst the global crisis that so many people are shouting lies abundant opportunities that most of us are stepping on daily without noticing until an outsider comes to show us the opportunities in our towns where we have lived all our lives. Dr. Myles Munroe shared a story with us in a meeting on the 19th day in April of 2009 about how he and so many other people had lived on the Hogue Island in the Bahamas for several years. They had only seen the Island as a refuse dump and that was the only thing that it was used for Dr. Myles even said he and some other people used to go to the beach around that Island but they only went there to swim. One day an American was driving past that Island when he was on vacation in Bahamas. In his mind what he saw was Paradise Island and not Hogue Island so he went to the government that he wanted to purchase the land. The government gladly gave him that land for so little because to them it was a mere refuse dump.

When he got the Island, according Dr. Myles Munroe, all he did was just to change the name of the Island from Hogue Island to Paradise Island. When the story was being shared the Island had become the most expensive piece of property in the Caribbean and the foreigner is making cool money because the people who live in that country go there to work for him. They never say the paradise. To succeed in business the first thing you need is a solid idea and not money. This is the era of idea-preneurship where business will thrive on ability to create ideas, manage them and as well exchange them for money as services products or directly selling the idea. A lot of people say they need capital and I do not disagree with the fact that the capital is needed but there are different types of capitals. Finance is just one but too many people focus on that instead of starting out with ideas which I refer to as brain capital. When you have money and you don’t have the brain capital you will still be stuck along the line so it is important to look at the value of the business you are doing or you intend to do first from the angle of idea base and then financial base.

When I wanted to publish my first book all I had was an idea. I shared my idea with people and they believed in the idea. When they believed in the idea they took up some responsibilities as well and they provided some of the contacts needed. Before I knew I had found a sponsor. I first had an idea, wrote it clearly in papers and shared the idea with a team. A team is also a form of capital to me that I refer to as human capital because it was the idea that moved the team and the team eventually gave the needed contacts to get the sponsorship. I didn’t start out by looking for money.

To start a business put your brain power to work and with your brain power engage a team that believes in you because the team you have will always be more important than the money you have. When you have no money but you have a strong team you can always get huge funds. With huge funds and no team you will squander the funds in no time because you will spend unnecessarily and most likely, unwisely. Ibukun Awosika, owner of a furniture company started her company by getting a contract from one man, giving it to a carpenter she had known and collecting the money. She paid the carpenters who had worked with her in an uncompleted building and what was left was hers.

A Mouthful generation with a mouthed breed – Fola Daniel Adelesi

A few years back some colloquial words – Slangs – came into the fore front of language in the country – Nigeria – but the interesting thing is that these words do not only have some interesting underlying meaning apart from the way the users intended to use it. They were words that were coined from what the English man would call having a sugar coated mouth. Nigerians in their usual characteristics of creativity with language formed two interesting words and they are “mouthful” and “mouthed.” When these words were coined the users of the words either used them when some influential people spoke or when some people made some empty boasts. If it was used after an influential person had spoken then it means the person’s opinions are respected and the person’s words would not be taken for granted. If someone who is making an empty boast gets a comment with those two words then the users are trying to say that they have only known him to be a speaker but never a doer.

Sometimes these two words were used to very impressive public speakers in town. The users would say about their favourite preachers or speakers that they are mouthful or mouthed as a way to express the speakers’ eloquence or depth of knowledge to another person.

As these words permeated the daily words being used by the people I personally began to put in personal interpretation especially with the emphasis of the people who used the words. For me to be mouthful would mean that you talk a lot. You have a sugar coated mouth. You can keep the audience glued to their seats when you speak but you do not have any authority as an undertone in your words. Being mouthed for me would mean that you are a great speaker but when you speak there are results. You don’t just stand to speak when you do not want to do what you are saying. You are also respected as a speaker not for the words only but for the results.

I have captioned this piece a mouthful generation with a mouthed breed because this is a generation where there are very many people who are talking but with only a few people who are getting down to action. I find a lot of people who seem to want to share an opinion but they don’t seem to realize that opinions are better shared on the results that you already have. It should be noted that the smallest of actions are greater and more revered than the biggest of intentions. We have too many mouthful people – talking and shouting people, people who seem to know what is right, people who seem to know what ought to be done – but there are only a few mouthed people – people who do what is right and begin to show others how to do them, people who do and express the right things, people who have tested what they are saying. When what you are saying has not been tested it remains an opinion but after testing it becomes a principle. Bible talks about the things that Jesus began to do and to teach, meaning that Jesus was mouthed and not mouthful. Stop being mouthful, be mouthed

You and I – Fola Daniel Adelesi

You and I should not focus on each other’s weak points.
You and I should keep each other’s weak points away from the third party
You and I should respect each other’s emotion
You and I should not take advantage of each other’s ignorance.
You and I should learn to encourage each other
You and I should not discourage each other for frivolous motives.
You and I should not listen to rumour mongers.
You and I should respect each other’s dos and don’ts.
You and I should help ourselves with our problems
You and I should not shy away from helping each other at any time.
You and I should have it in mind that we would be remembered for the problems we solved , not the problems we created for each other.
You and I should think big.
You and I should not be pessimistic about things.
You and I should be models to those behind us.
You and I should always view things from the angle of solution, not the magnitude of the problem.
You and I should be interested in each other’s well being.
You and I should always remind each other that we wouldn’t leave people the same way we met them.
You and I should learn how to catch fishes and also give to those whose fishes are not forthcoming.
You and I should tackle problems, not people responsible for the problems.
You and I should always wear our best expression.
You and I should create an identity.
You and I should be proud of our persons
You and I should not always dance to other people’s tunes.
You and I are not different from the successful men, neither were we made as inferiors so we have no excuse to fail.
You and I should know that what we choose is what we are and what we love we just shall be.

Sub divisions of the mind – Fola Daniel Adelesi

We are not going to be doing ourselves any good if we do not take a good look the sub divisions of the mind because all of the things we have discussed so far still link up to three main things. Before we talk about the three main parts of the heart we should remember or be informed that the human being is made up of the spirit, soul and the body. The body is the physical container that walks about. The body is obviously what you touch and see. The soul is the one that acts through the body by taking decisions and as well receiving signals. It is also the link between the spirit and the body. The spirit is actually the main part of the man that conceives the inexplicable but presents it to the soul through the mind and the mind brings it to the world through the flesh.

The focus for now is not on the other parts so lets narrow down to the soul. The soul also contains three parts and they are the mind, will and emotions. The first one, mind, which is what we have been focusing on also contains three main parts and they are the:

1.) conscious
2.) pre-conscious
3.) sub-conscious mind.

Conscious Mind

I have talked extensively about your physical senses and they still come to play here under the conscious mind. Your conscious mind is the part of your mind that is aware of what’s going on around you. It’s your conscious mind that recognizes or gets the attention of the sounds around you. It’s your conscious mind that recognizes the pictures in front of you. It’s your conscious mind that pays attention to the funny displays all around you. It’s your conscious mind that differentiates between colours instantly. It is only as relevant as the moment. The conscious mind is at work when you are awake. The conscious mind is what helps you relate with the environment. You hear a sound and you move towards the sound. If you did not have a conscious mind you would not have been able to respond to the sound. It is also important to say that the conscious mind is the only link that the environment has with your preconscious mind. Your conscious mind works like the lens of a digital camera taking still pictures. The camera cannot take pictures that the lens has not located. So your mind cannot accommodate what you have not envisioned.

Pre-conscious Mind

The preconscious mind is like the storage device for the conscious mind. Maybe I should say that the preconscious mind works like the personal assistant of the conscious mind. It’s the preconscious mind – personal assistant – that helps the conscious mind – the boss – to keep all relevant appointments by sending a remember from what was recorded. The preconscious works like the man keeping the diary of a public speaker and prompting regularly so that engagements are kept. It really works as the warehouse for every thing found by the conscious mind.

One of the easiest ways to remember how the preconscious works is to take a look at a digital camera for taking still pictures. The lens of the camera that finds the image to capture is the conscious mind just like I said earlier but the preconscious mind is the memory card (SD or and other format) that stores the pictures taken. This card is so important because when you remove it from the camera you will not be able to access all the pictures that the camera has taken. It is true it was not the storage card that took the pictures but the moment the storage card is out then you will not have the pictures anymore. It’s the same with the conscious and the preconscious mind. It is the conscious mind that relates with the environment and comes back to file a report with the preconscious. When the reports are not presented by the preconscious after being filed, there is nothing the conscious mind can do other than to go looking afresh for the details outside. This accounts for why you forget some of the things you have seen, heard, learnt or planned. It simply was because your preconscious did not record it! I am sure you remember all the illustrations given concerning the computer system.

… to be continued.

Metaphors for the mind – Fola Daniel Adelesi

1.) The seat of power/ Control tower.

Having explained to you what the sense organs do in connection with the mind, it should be easy to understand why the mind is referred to as the seat of power or the control tower. When signals are sent to the mind and the mind has not decided what to do there is nothing the body can do. In other words the actions human beings take are consequent upon the conclusions in the mind. When you are fully awake it is because your mind is fully alert. When you are not fully awake it is also because your mind is not fully alert. When the communication signal between your eyes and your mind becomes so thin then your eyes begin to shut down. It is your mind that tells you what to do and what you do comes around to make you who you are. You are a product of your mind and that is why it is called the control tower. A man is not as powerful as the position he occupies but as his mind. The power available at my disposal is dependent on what my mind offers me. This explains why some people go craving for external powers only through position because they do not understand that power is from within. Brain power or mind power is the only real and lasting power a man has to operate with.

2.) Your mind is a transmitter.

When you look at the life of a man critically there will be no need to ask him what he is thinking about or what has been going on in his mind. Take a good look at television stations. You don’t need to ask what’s going on in the studio or in the editing room or in the control room. You only need to put on your television to see what’s going on there. You can tell what’s going on there not only because you have the receiver in your house but because there is a transmitter in the television station that sends signals to all of the people who care to know what they are doing. For human beings our attitude or character is like the device showing to the world what the mind is transmitting. When you open your mouth to speak your mouth becomes the device showing what your mind is transmitting. When your hands move other people get an idea of what your mind is transmitting. When your legs move or you take any kind of action you are simply telling the people around what your mind is transmitting. It therefore means that your five sense organs don’t only receive messages for the mind to interpret, they also reflect what the mind has interpreted and has decided to do.

3.) Your mind is a receiver.

Just like it has been said earlier, everything that you sense organs get will go into your mind and they remain there. It is as a result of the several things that have gone into your mind and have settled down there that we have what is called the mind set. Rev. Sam Adeyemi as a speaker who has an engineering background likes to explain mindset using the example of a concrete in a frame work. When the concrete is mixed it is not usually solid and it has not shape but then it would be poured into the framework. After staying there for a while it settles and solidifies. It also takes the shape of the framework. At that point the concrete becomes hard to break. That is how a mindset works. The things that went into your mind consistently and settled in there became fixed and even hard to remove or hard to break.

4.) Your mind is a computer system.

Understanding how the computer works will help you understand how your mind works. Let’s start with the keyboard for a practical example. Most of the things that go into the computer go in there through the keyboard. You strike some keys on the keyboard and the central processing unit recognizes the key you struck. After the key has been recognized it will then be displayed by your monitor. In this case the keyboard for your mind can be your eyes. It takes pictures, colours, objects and tells your mind what they do. Your mind is the hard disk that recognizes these things like the central processing unit of a computer. Just like we have the monitor that displays what has been stored in a computer, I already told you that your character is the monitor that shows the whole world what was stored in your mind. The routes you are taking today are simply a reflection of the map spread out on your mind. Remember that you cannot get out of the computer what you did not put in there.

The computer has a CD-Rom and I will want to liken this to your mouth. When a bad CD goes into the computer system it starts making noise and is most like to hang – have difficulty in processing commands and stop working temporarily. If a bad CD going into the system can make it hang then a bad thing going into your mind through your mouth can make your life hang. Therefore you need to watch what goes into your mouth and what comes out of your mouth.

There is a part of the computer that is called the USB HUB. I don’t want to disturb you with computer jargons so let us focus on the word hub. It simply means a connecting point. Several devices can connect to the computer through the hub. You can connect a printer, a scanner, a mobile phone, an ipod, a mouse, a keyboard, a led light and a speaker. That’s the same way your mind works. It is a hub, a connecting point, and you must be very careful to make sure not just anything goes into your mind. The most recent laptops being produced come with a facility that does not allow just any programme on your computer until you give access to such. You need to make your mind work like that computer that does not allow just anything into your mind.

Understanding your mind – Fola Daniel Adelesi

There are so many people who do not work effectively in life not because they do not know what they really want to do but simply because they do not understand their minds. Your mind is the seat of power and it is very important that you understand how your mind works. If you do not understand how your mind works then you will not even understand how you are supposed to function effectively in life.

The problem with so many people is that they are like a thin wire among several others in a very large component that is supposed to play its own role but does not know what to do. Imagine a whole computer system where the keyboard does not know what to do? Imagine a whole computer system where the hard disk does not know what to do? More importantly let us imagine that all the components of the computer system are working fine but the monitor that is supposed to display information does not know what ought to be done? How useless will the efforts of the other components become? You must understand that your entire body and life will either benefit from the activities of your mind or suffer from the inactivity of your mind.

For proper understanding of your mind I will want to present your mind to you in different metaphors. Your mind is 1.) The seat of power/ Control tower. 2.) Your mind is a transmitter. 3.) Your mind is a receiver. 4.) Your mind is a computer system.

Before explaining the different metaphors of your mind to you let me quickly explain to you what I call the agents of the mind. These agents are parts of the body that we all are so familiar with but often do not realize that they are so connected with the mind that they often do not succeed in doing anything without the mind. They either function properly or malfunction depending on the interpretation of the messages they get from the mind.

Agents of the mind

These agents of the mind are popularly referred to as the sense organs but I am calling them agents of the mind to help us see their connection with the mind. When they something is a “sense” organ, it often does not occur to us that it simply means it is an organ that is connected to the brain and consequently connected to the activity or the inactivity of the mind. Lets take a look at them one after the other.

1.) Eyes

Your eyes are the sense of seeing as you already know but the eyes do more than just seeing. The eyes capture images and send those images to the mind for processing. The reason you sometimes remember what you have seen is not because you have sharp eyes like some people always say. It is because you have been able to send that image to the mind and it was properly stored in the mind. When an image sent into your mind by the eyes is properly stored, it will not be so difficult to remember seeing such image the next time you see something. That explains why you see some people and you can’t remember seeing them. That is why you have met some people but you cannot remember having met them before. All of these have a connection with what the mind has stored up for you to use. Imagine if your mind and your eyes are not in agreement. Then your eyes will see a big truck coming your way but it will send a signal to your mind that what is coming is a bicycle. You will begin to misinterpret pictures and that can be a dangerous thing for us to do.

2.) Ears

This as you already know is your sense of hearing and it also helps your mind to store up sounds since it is the one that hears sounds. Whenever you hear a sound for the first time it may not sink properly until the sound it repeated to you. Sometimes after the sound must have been repeated you will not need a repeat of that sound because it would have been stored in your mind and your mind can, on its own, replay the sound to you. That explains why you can be walking on the road and a song just pops up on your mind. That song is one of the several sounds stored up in the mind so it can be easily replayed to you by your mind. Now you can see that your mind is not just for hearing. It is the agent that helps your mind store sounds. That is why you do not take your parents’ voices for your friends’ voices. It is the ear that helps you not to take a television sound for a strike on the keyboard of a computer. One of the ways you know if some sounds are good enough for you or not is because there is proper coordination between your mind and your ears. When there is no proper coordination you will not be able to tell what you ought to listen to or what you ought not to listen to. Why do you think you have the ability to choose from the vast kinds of music that we have today? It’s not just because you have good ears. It is more importantly because your mind and your ears are working in harmony.

3.) Nose

Your nose helps to differentiate between what we call odour and aroma. It perceives or it smells. That is primarily the function of the nose but much more than that, it helps as an agent of the mind to store the differences in the smell. It is because of what you have stored in the mind through the nose that you can say a fresh soup being prepared gives you aroma but the same soup three days later gives you odour. It is what you have stored up in your mind through the nose that helps you to say someone who has just come out of the bathroom smells nice as a result of combination of soap and body lotion. At the same time if you see this same person after several weeks without bathing you don’t need anyone to describe the odour to you because your nose has been trained to differentiate between odour and aroma and it has been stored in your mind. It is the proper coordination between your nose and your mind that tells you what to inhale and what you ought not to inhale. There’s definitely a problem when you can’t tell the difference between what to inhale and what you ought not to inhale.

4.) Mouth

The sense of taste and also the agent of confession is what the mind should be but a lot of people have simply reduced it to a mere object for tasting so the only thing they do consciously with their mouth is to eat. It will not matter if you know it or not but the truth is that you are always using your mouth as an agent of confession and that means if you do not use it deliberately you are most likely using it negatively. When you put something in your mouth it is the connection between your tongue and your mind that tells you that this thing is good enough. And when it is not good enough for consumption it is still the connection between your tongue and your mind that helps you know what is not good enough for your mouth. When your mind is not working properly you can begin to put ordinary leaves into your mouth and appreciate them as food. That sounds like being mad to you but that explains why a mad man cannot deicide the right thing to put into the mouth. The mind and the tongue are not interpreting something properly and what that means is that the tongue will misbehave.

5.) Skin

One easy way to understand that your skin is an agent of the mind is to look at how you respond when the sun comes up or when it goes down. Take a look at how you respond when someone hits you or when someone embraces you. All these are feelings like you will say but the reason you can adjust to those feelings is because the mind is working properly. If the mind is not working properly you will not be able to interpret the feelings and to be able to tell which of the feelings is good enough for you or not. I once read about a man whose toes were chopped off by rats because he does not feel anything anymore. The cells in the skin are dead so they are not sending any signal to the mind as per what ought to be done. I also read about a child from Philip Yancey’s “Where is God when it hurts” the deliberate cuts herself because she does not feel pains. At a point when she realized that her mother was feeling horrible about it, she started using that as a tool to get something from the mother if the mother refuses to give her what she wants. She is not aware of the fact that if she keeps cutting herself she will lose so much blood and bleed to death. The cells that are supposed to communicate with the mind are dead!

From all that you have read so far you can see that all your sense organs are connected to the mind and they mainly give signals to the mind. When a signal comes to the mind through the eyes, it may not be the eyes that will respond to the signal. The mind, upon receiving the signal, tells the right organ what to do. If a baby is crawling towards naked fire, it will be your eyes that will send signals to your mind. When the mind interprets the signal then it sends another message to your hands and legs in the direction of that child crawling towards naked fire. If you intend to respond using your eyes because it was your eyes that saw the scenario you would be preparing for a looming danger.

I have taken all the time to explain the sense organs and their connection to the mind simply because I want to pass across a simply message to you. The message is that all your sense organs are the connecting points to your mind and your mind is only as qualitative as what goes into it. Therefore, start a gate keeping process for your mind by choosing what goes in there deliberately. Choose carefully what you listen to. Choose carefully what you look at or pay attention to. When you begin to do this there will be a dramatic change in your life. A great life is simply the result of a great input into the mind. The Bible says, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” That can be interpreted to mean your mouth is limited to the quality of what goes into your mind.

Other causes of Identity Crisis – Fola Daniel Adelesi

4.) Wrong Exposure.

One of the battles that the society has to fight thoroughly in this present day is the content of the media ranging from print to the electronic and recently, internet. Every morning you wake to see the unexpected in the media and at a point the unexpected became the usual in the media. As far as the print is concerned too many people are consistently exposed to pornographic materials and we now have what I call media prostitution. You can flip through the pages of some magazines and you find people who display their contacts to offer sex to other people.

Nearly everyone who says he has a musical video today does not produce a video without showing a naked girl dancing like a mad devil advertising insanity. Unfortunately there are so many people who buy into this insanity. Audio materials in this present day are no longer what they used to be so you often wonder what happened to the purpose of music. Most times when you want to listen to music you would have a feeling that the song is supposed to be inspirational and it can even help you to get out of a moody situation. In some cases the songs are so strong that you can always remember the lyrics without paying special attention to learn it and this are the things that pop up on your minds in discouraging times. If the song is the right type of song it will give you some energy to keep going but if it is not then you have another issue to deal with. We have more demoralizing music in this present day than edifying music and the truth is that it has so much to do with the identity crisis that a lot of people are experiencing.

Music is powerful and it can get into the innermost part of your soul. That is why you do not struggle to learn music yet you can sing so many songs that you listened to on the airwaves. More than eighty percent of the people who know one song or the other simply started singing the song by listening the first and second time and singing along the third time. When you begin to sing a song consciously or otherwise you will begin to confess the values of that song into your life and if the values of the song are negative it means you are confessing the negative thing into your life.

You need to pay special attention to the things you are listening to if you really want to get out of identity crisis or if you do not want to get into it. You need to be very careful about the things you watch if you don’t want to get into trouble. Your memory has a way of storing the things that you see and replaying these things for you in some critical moments of your life. When you need a scene to replay in a discouraging time, it is what you have stored in that will be produced. You and I already know that when you don’t feed on balanced diet you will be malnourished. You may eating so much but you may not be eating the right thing so it will not matter how much you are eating at any time. Once you are not eating the right thing you will still not grow properly. That is exactly what it is with musical contents and the content of the videos that we view on daily basis.

The old ancient Hebrew book says you should guard your heart with all diligence. Not just anything is qualified to go in there because what goes in there is what the heart will reproduce for you. It is so easy for the wrong things to go into the hearts without you struggling to put them in there but you always have to make deliberate efforts to put the good things in there.

When the wrong things go into our hearts we begin to think in the wrong direction. We would be thinking in the wrong direction because the seeds of the wrong input will germinate wrong thoughts. When wrong thoughts germinate then we will live our lives wrongly because as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Personal and our very intrinsic values are transferred to us through the things that we watch and listen to. While these external values are being transferred to us, our inner values are suppressed for a while. When our inner values are suppressed we begin to live a fake life. The idea of a fake life is to live contrary to your deep inner values. The only way to begin to live like the real person that we are to start viewing the materials that will help refine and unveil the deep inner values that we carry all around without paying attention to them.

Now that you know you are exposed to identity crisis as a result of wrong exposure, wouldn’t you choose carefully what to view and what to listen to especially when this can affect you success in life?

5.) Cross-Cultural Exposition

The challenge of cross cultural exposition as it relates to identity crisis is not unconnected to the misconception of the original intention for cross cultural exposition. The reason for intermingling with people in other continents or people from other countries is not primarily to imitate their culture. Variety is the spice of life and we should not always forget that we have a colourful life, to a great extent, if we all do things differently.

Some of the problems we have encountered as a result of cross cultural exposition include the madness in fashion today. What is acceptable in one area as a result of the climatic conditions has been taken hook, line and sinker in another area even when the climatic condition does not call for that kind of apparel. Consequently you find people trying very hard to fit into the personality they have tried hard to portray.

As much as I do not want to hammer the culture of other people I need to say that we are supposed to look at people from other areas and appreciate their culture without losing our own cultural values. Some of the people we are even imitating are people who already have a problem with their culture. You will hear people in that community complaining about decadence, violence, youth restiveness, child delinquencies and people from some other parts of the world think that what they are seeing are the ideals of that society so they begin to blindly imitate.

What I have just talked about in the above paragraph is what I call cultural transfer of challenges. This simply means there are some problems that were not in some societies before but people in that society went to another society and returned to their society with the problems in the society they were coming from. One of the reasons some countries are becoming detestable for parents in other countries is based on the fact that they have seen young people get into those nations and often come back not with the good ideals of that society but with all the negativities that the nation has to parade.

Unfortunately, there so many communities and nations today that do not have their standards defined so they always let other communities perceived to be the famous and great communities to define the standard for them. Automatically the only thing you expect when one nation defines the standard for another is that the other nation looking up to have its standard defined imitates both good and bad.